Over-riding the paint() method

Question

I want to create a custom button-rounded sides with straight top and bottom to be exact. I understand that you can use the Component class to create components, and over-ride the paint() method to create the actual button's appearance, but how do you do this? Also how do you go about creating an actionlistener for a component like my button idea? Any help will be appreciated!

Answer 1

Since you are creating your own JButton you want to implement MouseListener so that you can detect the mouse up and mouse down events. If you are going to have a hover image then you want to implement MouseMotionListener as well. Here is an example:
public class MyButton extends JComponent implement MouseListener, MouseMotionListener {
  private Vector listeners = new Vector();
  public MyButton() {
    addMouseListener(this);
    addMouseMotionListener(this);
  public void addActionListener(ActionListener al) {
    listeners.add(al);
  public void removeActionListener(ActionListener al) {
    listeners.remove(al);
  //add the overridden methods from MouseListener, MouseMotionListener
  public void paint(Graphics g) {
    //paint based on the events
}This class will be notified when the mouse enters, exits, is clicked, etc. and you can set a state variable so that your paint routine knows what image to paint.
Hopefully this will clear it up. Not sure how I can make it clearer.